1. Field of the Invention
This invention provides means for a musician to play percussion instruments, e.g., drums and/or cymbals with his/her feet.
2. Prior Art
A musician who plays an instrument such as keyboard or guitar can enhance his/her performance by simultaneously playing a percussion instrument. For example, the foot-pedal of a standard hi-hat can be depressed on the two & four beats of each measure. A standard bass drum with standard foot-pedal can also be played.
To provide a wider variety of drum sounds, including cymbals, a system of electronic drums can also be used. In this system, foot switches (e.g. the Boss FS-5U Footswitch made by Roland Corp.) may be used to trigger digitally-recorded samples of drum sounds from an electronic drum machine. While good musical results may be obtained from this system, experience has found that audience members often lack the attention, sophistication, and insight to realize that the musician is triggering live drum sounds during performance. A good drum performance of this type sounds almost indistinguishable from a standard self-operating drum machine. With no actual drums to see, audience members tend to incorrectly assume that a drum machine is setting the music's tempo and triggering the drums sounds, even when the musician is actually creating the entire musical performance live. Hence, a live musical performance which may embody great coordination and skill is not fully appreciated by the audience. Another disadvantage of this electronic system is that simple footswitches cannot sense the downward velocity of the musician's foot. Hence, all drum beats have the same volume. Off-the-shelf methods of velocity sensing (such as those used on standard electronic musical keyboards) may be used to solve this problem, but these methods would require electromechanical engineering time, and the audience-perception problem discussed above would still remain.
It is possible to arrange drums/cymbals on the floor in front of a seated musician. A drum stick may then be attached to the musician's shoe(s), and the musician may then strike the drums/cymbals with the drumstick. However, this method has several disadvantages: Drums set on the floor will require a great deal of space, both horizontally and vertically. Hence, the musician will have to position his/her stool at a high level above the floor. If the musician is playing a standard acoustic piano, the piano itself may have to be elevated to accommodate the drums. The horizontal expanse of the drums/cymbals requires the musician to move his feet over large distances to reach different percussion instruments, making performance more clumsy and difficult. Also, a desirable drum beat sound generally requires that the drum stick, or beater, must freely bounce away from the percussion instrument after making contact. To manually achieve this action continuously with foot-mounted implements is difficult. Even a standard bass-drum/pedal requires that the musician must learn to release downward pressure on the pedal after the beater has made contact with the drum head, in order to produce a clean-sounding beat. This technique is aided somewhat in a standard bass drum arrangement because a standard bass drum beater has enough mass, and typically travels with enough velocity that it can impart a significant upward force on the musician's foot during the return bounce. But if one replaces the bass drum with a standard snare drum, and replaces the standard bass-drum beater with a drumstick, then the upward pedal force is reduced and a clean strike becomes more difficult. Also, this arrangement may result in a punctured snare drum head.
The manual-release requirement of a standard drum pedal is even more of a problem if the musician wishes to play one pedal with his/her toe and another pedal (playing a different instrument) with his/her heel. In this situation, there is a natural desire to rest the heel when playing the toe and vice versa. To perform a clean strike/bounce-away (to produce a satisfying ring and decay of the drum) with a standard drum pedal and then rest the beater against the drum head without producing a second audible strike is extremely difficult. Furthermore, it is impossible to play the other pedal with the first pedal resting in down position before the first strike has completely decayed, since holding the pedal down will cause the beater to press against the drum head, muting the ring.
British patent 185,227 (Davies), FIG. 12, discloses a striking device 116 which is driven by downward movement of a roller 112 attached to an arm 106. After the pedal 10 has reached its lower limit of travel, momentum of the striking device causes it to strike and rebound away from the drum 117. Several drawbacks are found with this arrangement:
(a) As the striking device is halted by downward roller pressure following a drum strike, an upward impulse, or “bump” is felt by the musician's foot. This impulse is distracting and irrelevant to the musical rhythm of the performance.
(b) The drum strike occurs after the pedal has reached its lower limit of travel. This detracts from the joy of playing since the event of the musician's foot hitting bottom does not correspond temporally with the event of the musician hearing the drum beat. It is preferable for the two events to occur simultaneously.(c) The arm is, of necessity, rigid; and therefore heavy. Also, the arm takes up vertical space for the entirety of its length. Hence, a great engineering challenge is presented if it is desired to have two such arms crossing each other to play different percussion instruments without multiplying the vertical height of the base structure 7.(d) The base structure 7 as shown takes up a great deal of vertical space, thus making it difficult to use when playing a piano.(e) The apparatus as shown uses many different parts for linking pedals with strikers. Hence, tooling for manufacture is expensive.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,747,464 (Russell) discloses a pedal-to-striker linkage using a bicycle-brake-type cable system. Running a cable through a curved conduit presents significant friction and wear.
Swiss patent 98,101 (Grilli), FIG. 3, discloses a rotor with a cable-pulling point located above the rotational axis. The rotor is mounted between two parallel horizontal sheets. Like Davies, the structure takes up a great deal of vertical space.
There exists a need for a method of playing non-electronic percussion instruments by foot which is versatile (can be used for many different percussion instruments), comfortable for the musician, easy to master, and uses physical space efficiently.
Glossary
Percussion instrument: Any of various musical instruments which are played by being struck, e.g., a snare, bass or tom drum, a cymbal, a cowbell. etc.
Percussion instrument manipulation device: A mechanical device which plays a percussion instrument and/or changes the sound of a percussion instrument.
Striking Device: A mechanical object which strikes a percussion instrument, e.g., a drumstick, mallet, bass drum beater, wire brush or Blastick®.
Escapement: A mechanism (e.g., a piano hammer action) including an input member (e.g., a wippen) which moves from a rest position to an end-of-travel position, and an output member, (i.e., a striking device) (e.g., a hammer shank & hammer head), wherein, as the input member travels from its rest position to its end-of-travel position, motion is transferred from the input member to the output member as the input member travels from the rest position to a predetermined release position between the rest and end-of-travel positions, and as the input member travels between the release position and the end-of-travel position, the output member is not propelled by the input member, and is free to bounce off an object (e.g., a piano string or drum head) and reverse its direction of travel, even as the input member continues to travel toward its end-of-travel position. An escapement mechanism may include a backcheck for catching the output member after it has struck and bounced away from the instrument. Thus, the output member is prevented from bouncing back toward the instrument. An escapement mechanism may also include a jack (as in a piano action) which is driven by the input member to propel the output member toward the instrument, and a letoff device (e.g., a letoff button) to disengage the jack from propelling the striking device during a continuous downward pedal movement shortly before the striking device strikes the instrument.
Line: An elongate structure which is used to pull an object in the same direction as its length, e.g., a cable, wire, string, or a tracker rod (such as found in old-style pipe organs).
Rim Shot: A “side stick” beat played on a drum, typically a snare drum. A rim shot is typically played by holding the drumstick near the center of its length over the head, continuously pressing the tip of the drumstick against the head, accelerating the butt end of the stick toward the rim, and striking the rim. This type of beat is often used in bossa-nova patterns or in light rock styles when a soft mood is desired. NOTE: A “rim shot” in this specification and claims is not to be confused with a drum beat in which the stick is held at or near its butt end, and the entire stick is accelerated toward the drum in such a manner that the side of the stick strikes the rim at the same instant that the tip strikes the head.